the alchemists would be if it were, as it is not, to be found.  This is only to be learned in courts, where clashing views, jarring opinions, and cordial hatreds, are softened and kept within decent bounds by politeness and manners.  Frequent, observe, and learn courts.  Are you free of that of St. Cloud?  Are you often at Versailles?  Insinuate and wriggle yourself into favor at those places.  L’Abbe de la Ville, my old friend, will help you at the latter; your three ladies may establish you in the former.  The good-breeding ‘de la ville et de la cour’ [of the city and of the court] are different; but without deciding which is intrinsically the best, that of the court is, without doubt, the most necessary for you, who are to live, to grow, and to rise in courts.  In two years’ time, which will be as soon as you are fit for it, I hope to be able to plant you in the soil of a young court here:  where, if you have all the address, the suppleness and versatility of a good courtier, you will have a great chance of thriving and flourishing.  Young favor is easily acquired if the proper means are employed; and, when acquired, it is warm, if not durable; and the warm moments must be snatched and improved.  ’Quitte pour ce qui en pent arriver apres’.  Do not mention this view of mine for you to any one mortal; but learn to keep your own secrets, which, by the way, very few people can do.

If your course of experimental philosophy with Abbe Nolot is over, I would have you apply to Abbe Sallier, for a master to give you a general notion of astronomy and geometry; of both of which you may know as much, as I desire you should, in six months’ time.  I only desire that you should have a clear notion of the present planetary system, and the history of all the former systems.  Fontenelle’s ‘Pluralites des Mondes’ will almost teach you all you need know upon that subject.  As for geometry, the seven first books of Euclid will be a sufficient portion of it for you.  It is right to have a general notion of those abstruse sciences, so as not to appear quite ignorant of them, when they happen, as sometimes they do, to be the topics of conversation; but a deep knowledge of them requires too much time, and engrosses the mind too much.  I repeat it again and again to you, Let the great book of the world be your principal study.  ‘Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna’; which may be rendered thus in English:  Turn Over men by day, and women by night.  I mean only the best editions.

Whatever may be said at Paris of my speech upon the bill for the reformation of the present calendar, or whatever applause it may have met with here, the whole, I can assure you, is owing to the words and to the delivery, but by no means to the matter; which, as I told you in a former letter, I was not master of.  I mention this again, to show you the importance of well-chosen words, harmonious periods, and good